Frost Blue
by Incarnadine
Summary: What sort of person cares more about the past than the future, more about colours than people? And what sort of person could love someone like that? Post war DracoHermione.


_Disclaimer: The characters in this story belong not to me but to JK Rowling, to whom I apologise profusely._

_Author's Note: I never meant to write this story. It just happened. It's been a while since I read or 'believed' in D/Hr, so this came as a bit of a shock to me. It's post-war, again, as so many of my stories are, and if you want a fixing on the time, the protagonists are probably about twenty-five or –six. It was inspired, at least in part, by a discussion I had with my housemate on Valentine's Day about the colours of roses. I don't know if you'd call this fluff, but it's probably as close to it as I'm ever going to get. Enjoy, and please review!_

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_**Frost Blue**_

It's Valentine's Day, and we spend the morning talking about roses. What the colours mean. Red for passion, white for purity, pink for affection, black for a love to last till death. I tell him that a blue rose means devotion, and he smiles, and says:

'I've never seen a blue rose.' He smirks. 'But then I've never seen devotion, either.' No, never seen it nor never felt it. I've never imagined he'd been devoted to his Master. Fear isn't devotion. Fear is grey-black, more destructive than pain, because at least pain is real and can be suffered. Fear is crippling. It's better to be in agony than to be afraid.

'I have.' Seen it and felt it too. I was so devoted to Harry, during the war. _We _were so devoted to him. Because devotion is love and faithfulness, and we only ever followed him because we loved him. That was why he won, in the end, because he could rule people's hearts, and Voldemort could only rule people's minds. He commanded love, and the Dark Lord only fear.

'Hmm.' He doesn't argue. He probably knows what I mean. 'D'you think it'd be the same if I _spelled_ a rose blue?' He looks at me and I can see that he is half-serious. Always looking for the short-cut. Always imagining that money and talent could make up for what he was, his personality.

'Of course not.' Don't be stupid. 'You can't fake devotion.' Maybe you can. There's a shade of blue that speaks of falseness and faithlessness. Pale frost-blue, the colour of the sky in the winter. It's not blue, but it pretends to be.

'I suppose you can't,' he says it amiably enough. He doesn't mind being contradicted any more. He has his life and limbs; what more can he ask? 'But they wouldn't _know_.' Stupid of me to imagine that he would ever stop dealing in lies. He, who spent so many years cloaked in deception.

It feels like sacrilege. I'm not outraged that he thinks he can simulate emotion, or that he's intending to lie to some poor girl – or man – out there. How to explain it? It isn't that blue is the colour of Ravenclaw, where I always belonged, where I would have gone if not for my stubbornness. It isn't that his eyes, so grey at first sight, are tainted with blue. Not really. It's a colour I always loved, ever since I was a bookish tomboy at primary school. What sort of a person am I, to whom the past means more than the future, and colours more than people?

'Who are you thinking of?' Not because it matters to me. He's had many lovers over the years, his shadowed past and the fact that he lives with me never seeming to put anyone off. Men and women, although I don't know if he's bisexual, sex-crazed or if he just doesn't give a damn. I'm always jealous, although I don't know if I'm jealous of him – it's always so easy for him, though he isn't really good-looking at all – or if I'm jealous of _them_.

He shrugs. 'No one in particular.' He's lying, and that means that he doesn't want me to know. Maybe he's afraid I'll disapprove, although I never have before. I don't think I care enough to disapprove… or maybe that's not true. Maybe I care too much about _him_, who he really is, to be bothered by what his playboy mask does or does not do.

I wouldn't disapprove, even if he was courting the Minister for Magic himself, but I don't want to be shut out. 'Liar.'

He shrugs. 'I was born a liar,' he says, easily. 'It's pathological.' And so it is, though he doesn't usually admit it so readily. 'Does it matter? You know that you're the only person in the world I actually care anything for.' It might be true. It might not. I'm not arrogant, but probably it is, because he always comes back. And, sad though it might seem, he is my only friend now. He, who once would have spat on me rather than speak to me.

'You don't normally lie to me.' Despite those eyes, in some lights grey, in others frost-blue, deceitful and faithless. Despite his history, his hatred of what I am, his condescending manner of making me feel like an _exception_. If everyone else I'd ever cared about wasn't dead, I wouldn't be living with him. I never imagined I would be. I thought, once, maybe Ron, Harry and I might live together, the eternal trio, never to be parted. But they are dead and gone, and I am stuck with the arrogant affliction of Draco Malfoy.

He smiles. 'Who says I'm lying now?' God, he's being pedantic, and I hate him when he's like this. 'You just said I was a liar. And it's true. I wouldn't be _alive_ if I couldn't lie in thought, word and action.' Then he lowers his voice and says with an earnestness that surprises me and makes me tremble, 'I don't lie to you. You're…' He hesitates, as if the words don't come easily to him, or as if he doesn't know, really, what he wants to say. 'You're just an exception, Hermione Granger. An exception to every rule I've ever made myself.' The words might have sounded romantic, said by anyone else, but when he said them, they were just words. They meant what they meant.

I shrug. 'You always kept all of your promises, except the ones you made to yourself.'

'If I'd kept all of my promises, you'd be dead and I'd be a lieutenant of evil,' he says, gravely. It's true. He made promises, I suppose, to those others in his life, the Dark ones who wanted to destroy us all. Were they promises, or were they lies? Are promises ever anything other than lies?

'Or you'd be a dead villain,' I return with equanimity.

He inclines his head in acknowledgement. 'Or that.' He's been lounging on the sofa all this time, and now he stands up, brushing wrinkles out of his robes. He's never worn Muggle clothes in all the time I've known him, except when it's been absolutely necessary as a disguise.

'Going somewhere?' It's Sunday. If it were any other day, I'd be at work. He only works when it suits him, normally about three days a week. I don't know how they put up with it. I wouldn't put up with it. But they have to, I suppose, because they can't do without him and he knows it. Where else would they find someone with his talents, his experience? It's so arrogant, so _like him_ to expect the world to wrap itself around him. The fact that he gets away with it makes it worse. He's insufferable, but he's all they've got. All I've got.

'Yes.' Damn him for never saying more than he has to, never sharing anything with anyone, save those things he cannot hide. He must read my expression, or something, because he says, 'Shopping. Be back soon.' And then he's gone, one moment there, the next vanished into space. Gone. And I'm alone again, not that I mind it, not that I don't spend more time alone than is probably healthy.

I don't miss him when he goes. I don't care what he does when he's not with me. I don't care who he sees or where he goes. I don't mind that people whisper about us in The Leaky Cauldron, or on street corners, or wherever magical people meet. I don't wish that the rumours were true. It's all an arrangement of convenience, because he doesn't feel anything for me, and I don't feel anything for him.

But if that's so, why am I crying?

Crying for the world, the past, the future, the people I had known and loved who never got to _have_ a future. Or maybe not. Maybe it's all selfish. Maybe it's because I'm lonely, living with a man I used to hate. Maybe I'm crying because _my _life is so bleak, sod the world, sod the sacrifices made by greater heroes than me – _I'm not happy_.

He comes back, a couple of hours later. I hear him appear in the lounge, but I don't go out to greet him. Why should I? I know it's him – I can _feel_ him – but I've got no reason to go and see him. We live together because there's no one else. That's all. I often wish the rest of my life would be like that – simple, set down in black-and-white, no emotions involved.

When I do go out, half an hour later, it's to get a cup of coffee to help with my work. He's lying on the sofa on his back, pale hair splayed over the cushions, twirling a flower between his fingers. I look at it. It's a blue rose. I smile, faintly; it's so much like him to go out and find one. I'm almost surprised he didn't come bursting into my room to show it off. He's irritatingly and endearingly childlike in some ways.

He looks up. 'I found one,' he says. 'It's not very good, though.' And it isn't, really; it's too pale, too sickly, anaemic and half-dead – like him. It's not very blue, either. It's pale blue, like the highlights in his eyes, like the sky in November. If this rose symbolises devotion, it's a weak sort of devotion. The sort that means nothing, because there was no one else. It means _attachment_, maybe, but not _dedication_, not _fidelity_, not _commitment._

He stands up and gives it to me. 'For you,' he says, and I'm surprised, partly at the gift and partly because he doesn't normally use unnecessary words. He converses as if he was once told he'd be billed or beaten for every superfluous word. Maybe he was.

I take it. 'Thank you.' I look at him, critically. 'Why?'

He shrugs, but his eyes are on fire. 'I wanted you to have it.' He looks torn, now. 'I mean what it says.' And I wonder if he _knows_ what it says, if he has any idea what devotion is, or what it means. I wonder if he knows that this pale blue means nothing, really; that it is a mere shadow of the substance of love – that it is strangely appropriate.

'Is it real, or did you spell it?' There are other questions, but I can't cope with asking them, or hearing the answers.

He laughs. 'I'd like to think I could make a better blue rose than that.' Probably he could. Probably, when he is with his lovers, he creates a pretty semblance of a love that cannot exist. At least with me he is honest. What we have might not be much, but it is what it is.

'I suppose.' Now I dare to ask a question. 'Do you _really_ mean what it says, Draco? Do you even _know_ what it says?' _And if you do, why? Why now?_

He looks at me, seriously. 'I never lie to you,' he says, simply, as if that explains everything. 'And I know what it means. It reminds me of us.' He casts a disdainful look at the flower. 'I don't know if that's a good thing. But it's a _thing_, nevertheless.' And he is right, of course, because something is better than nothing… most of the time.

'You're just lonely.'

He snorts. 'I could go out and find someone, if I wanted to,' he says, and I know it's true. 'So could you. On Valentine's, all you need to do is trawl the bars, looking for anyone not attached to someone else's face.' There's a sort of superiority in his tone, as there always is, but I think that this time it's deserved. He _is_ better than me. At least he's moved on with his life. All I ever seem to do is work and wallow.

'So why, then?' I don't know what I want to hear. I don't know whether, when he asks me, I want to say yes. It's not as if I've ever wanted him _like that_. But then I remember what my mother used to say to me, when I was ten years old and the boys at school were mean to me: _'One day, Hermione, you'll find someone who's like you in spirit. Then it won't matter what you look like, or what he looks like._' She never promised me perfection. She never promised me that I'd get a prince or a knight in shining armour. Just comfort. Just compatibility. _Just love. Love, like a blue rose._

Grey eyes smile at me. 'Because…' he hesitates. He can't explain. 'I don't know,' he admits, eventually. 'It seems right. Like…' He stops and starts again. 'This morning, when you were talking about the roses… it just clicked. That there's a difference between passion and love. That it's better to be with someone who feels _comfortable_, like a friend, someone you don't _mind_ seeing you at your worst. That _that's _what's real, not beauty or wit or blind, short-term passion. That I like living with you.' He sighs. 'And because the rose was pretty.' So like him, that throw-away comment, cheapening the seriousness of his declaration.

'Pretty, huh?' I look at it, and I realise it _is_ pretty. Maybe a bit battered, a bit faded, but pretty nonetheless. Like us. Then I look up at him and smile. He returns the smile, and I realise that I need him. We aren't soul mates, or anything so stupidly sappy and New Age, but we're definitely something more than friends, though we haven't ever kissed and barely ever touch. No wonder there are all those rumours. Sometimes outsiders are better at seeing what's there than the people involved.

'Yes.' And he doesn't say _like you_ because he doesn't lie to me, and we both know I am not pretty. But then, neither is he. He laughs. 'Valentine's Day,' he says, with something like amazed disgust in his voice. 'I didn't think I was so _soft_. This is your fault,' he makes it a mock-accusation. 'You've ruined me.'

He flops back down onto the sofa, and I sit beside him. We've done this so many times before, filled many a spare moment with seemingly pointless conversations. It isn't any different, really, but it _feels_ different. He sprawls as he normally does, taking up more than his fair share, and I curl my legs around his. But there's something else there too, as if everything is just a little bit more _in focus_ than it normally is. I twirl the rose around in my fingers.

'So,' his voice is perfectly level, as if he's discussing a business transaction. Only his eyes, pale and tinged with blue, tell me that this is something more important to him than any job could be. 'Do you want me to tell you?'

I don't say _tell me what_ because I know what he means. And I'm not ready to hear it. Certainly not ready to say it back. Because I don't lie, and I don't know yet whether it's true. 'I thought you didn't lie to me,' I say, partly to see if he's really serious, and partly to see if I can annoy him.

He snorts and strokes my hair. 'It wouldn't be a lie,' he says, and I wonder where the Draco Malfoy I used to hate has gone. Did the war do this to him, or was he always like this, underneath? 'But I'll keep it to myself, for now, if that's what you want.' He doesn't look upset about it. Because he knows that my acceptance of the rose was my acceptance of him. Because he feels comfortable with me, as I do with him. Because there's no hurry; we've got as long as we want. We've got forever.

'I don't need the words,' I say, lying back across him and staring at the rose as it turns in my hands. Its weak blue petals catch the light. 'We've never needed words.' He smiles. I think that the rose says everything – the good and the bad – that needs to be said. And then I think that maybe this is why I've always loved blue. Blue, the colour of tranquility. The colour always seemed to hold a promise for me, and now, looking into Draco's smiling eyes, I think that maybe that promise is about to be fulfilled.


End file.
